Socialization, and its modulation by sex, on the development and recovery of activity-based anorexia in rats

<p><b>Description of the project</b></p>

<p>Activity-based anorexia (ABA) is the main animal model used in the laboratory to study the role of restricted food intake and the central importance of excessive physical activity on the severe weight loss observed in the human disorder of anorexia nervosa. The procedure is usually carried out by individual isolation of animals, usually rats or mice, in a cage equipped with an activity wheel that they can access 23 hours a day and where food intake is limited to 1 h per day. Under these conditions, animals progressively perform more exercise despite eating less, and they lose weight until death unless they are withdrawn from the procedure. It is known that the impact that social stress (e.g. isolation) exerts on health is common to humans and other social mammals, where it has been observed that adverse social consequences cause pathologies with patterns parallel to those that occur in humans. In the present study, the animals’ social condition was manipulated to observe the effect of socialization in ABA development, its recovery, and the possible different influence of the variable sex on ABA development. The results allow us to deepen our knowledge of this phenomenon and how variables related to the social environment could affect the development and recovery of anorexia nervosa, in the hope that better prevention and therapy will be given to the patients that need them.</p>